Kete: Predicting Known Minor Bodies in Images

Kete is an open-source software package for quickly and accurately predicting the positions and magnitudes of asteroids and comets in large-scale, all-sky surveys. It can predict observable objects for any ground or space-based telescope. Kete contains a collection of tools, including simple optical and thermal modeling, $n$-body orbit calculations, and custom multi-threaded SPICE kernel support. It can be used for observation planning, pre-discovery of detections at a large scale, and labeling known solar system objects in images. Here we demonstrate some of the capabilities by predicting all observations of every numbered asteroid seen by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) surveys during single years of their operations, predicting locations and magnitudes of 756,999 asteroids in over 11 million images.

Publication Details

Journal
ArXiv.org
Published
2025-09-04
Primary Topic
Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping
Type
article
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article

Kete: Predicting Known Minor Bodies in Images

ArXiv.org
Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping
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Kete: Predicting Known Minor Bodies in Images

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Abstract

Kete is an open-source software package for quickly and accurately predicting the positions and magnitudes of asteroids and comets in large-scale, all-sky surveys. It can predict observable objects for any ground or space-based telescope. Kete contains a collection of tools, including simple optical and thermal modeling, $n$-body orbit calculations, and custom multi-threaded SPICE kernel support. It can be used for observation planning, pre-discovery of detections at a large scale, and labeling known solar system objects in images. Here we demonstrate some of the capabilities by predicting all observations of every numbered asteroid seen by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) surveys during single years of their operations, predicting locations and magnitudes of 756,999 asteroids in over 11 million images.

ArXiv.org
Openalex Percentile: Top 48%
Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping
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Kete: Predicting Known Minor Bodies in Images · ArXiv.org (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS